Sign Of The Times - Wal-Mart Launches Employee Food Drive

You may find what is happening at one Wal-Mart in Ohio very hard to believe. At the Wal-mart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio employees are being asked to donate food items so that other employees that cannot afford to buy Thanksgiving dinner will be able to enjoy one too. You can see a photo of the donation bins that has been posted on Twitter right here. On the one hand, it is commendable that someone at that Wal-Mart is deeply concerned about the employees that are so poor that they cannot afford to buy the food that they need for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, this is a perfect example that shows how the quality of the jobs in this country has gone down the toilet.

Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the United States and it had operating income of 26.5 billion dollars last year. Wal-Mart is not required to pay their employees a decent wage, and it is very unlikely that anyone will force them to. But they should. Because Wal-Mart does not pay decent wages to their employees, the rest of us end up with the bill. As you will see below, huge numbers of Wal-Mart employees end up on Medicaid and other government assistance programs. Meanwhile, those that control Wal-Mart continue to enjoy absolutely massive profits.

The following is a short excerpt from a local news story about the donation bins that have been set out at the Wal-Mart in Canton, Ohio. As the story notes, this does not appear to be a nationwide program, and the donation bins are only available in an employee-only area...

The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.

This isn't a merchandise display. It's a food drive - not for the community, but for needy workers.

It turns out that a lot of Wal-Mart employees simply cannot get by without financial help from the government, and the numbers are staggering. A recent Businessweek article discussed one study that found that 300 employees at just one Wal-Mart in Wisconsin actually receive a combined total of nearly a million dollars a year in public assistance...

“A decent wage is their demand—a livable wage, of all things,” said Representative George Miller (D-Calif.). The problem with companies like Wal-Mart is their “unwillingness, not their inability, to pay that wage,” he said. “They hand off the difference to taxpayers.” Miller was referring to a congressional report (PDF) released in May that calculated how much Walmart workers rely on public assistance. The study found that the 300 employees at one Supercenter in Wisconsin required some $900,000 worth of public assistance a year.

And according to Politifact, in many states Wal-Mart employees represent the largest single group of people enrolled in the Medicaid program...

In Florida, Wal-Mart topped all companies operating in Florida with the largest number of employees and family members (12,300) eligible for Medicaid, according to a 2005 Tampa Bay Times story. Wal-Mart also ranked highly (No. 2) for dependents enrolled in Florida Healthy Kids or KidCare, trailing Miami-Dade County employees.

In Missouri, where Wal-Mart is the largest employer behind state government, the state’s social services department determined Walmart employees outnumbered all others with employees and family members enrolled in MO HealthNet, the state’s Medicaid plan, in the first quarter of 2011. However, at almost 14 percent, it did not represent the highest percentage of workers enrolled or responsible for an enrollee (Dollar General, for instance, was much higher at 42 percent).

And in Pennsylvania, a 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer investigation revealed the company had the highest percentage of employees enrolled in Medicaid. One in six of Walmart’s 48,000 Pennsylvania employees were enrolled in Medicaid, costing the state about $15 million a year (it’s likely higher because the Inquirer’s story did not cover employees’ dependents on Medicaid, or any other public assistance such as food stamps).

This is a disgrace.

Your taxes and my taxes are going to subsidize Wal-Mart.

The government has to take more money from all the rest of us because Wal-Mart will not pay their workers a decent wage. Because Wal-Mart will not support them, we end up supporting them.

Meanwhile, the six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.

So why do people still work there?

Well, because there is a huge shortage of jobs in this country. As I noted yesterday, the total number of working age Americans without a job has increased by 27 million since the year 2000.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if long-term discouraged workers were still included in the official government employment figures like they were back in 1994, then the broadest measure of unemployment would now be approaching 25 percent. In fact, according to his charts unemployment in the U.S. is now worse than it was at any point during the last recession.

And even the New York Times is admitting that long-term unemployment in America is up by 213 percent since 2007.

At this point, there are millions upon millions of desperate Americans that will take just about any job that they can get.

Meanwhile, the quality of the jobs in this country continues to go downhill very rapidly.

For example, did you know that about 40 percent of all U.S. workers actually make less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968?

And did you know that 65 percent of all American workers make less than $40,000 a year before taxes?

At the same time, the good paying high tech jobs that our politicians have been promising us continue to disappear. For instance, 19,507 biopharma jobs were eliminated between January 1, 2013 and October 31, 2013. That is a 68 percent increase over the pace of biopharma job losses during the same period last year.

So are there any areas of the country that are actually doing well right now?

Well, yes there is. In fact, the Washington D.C. region has added more "1 percent households" over the past decade than anyone else has...

The winners in the new Washington are not just the former senators, party consiglieri and four-star generals who have always profited from their connections. Now they are also the former bureaucrats, accountants and staff officers for whom unimagined riches are suddenly possible. They are the entrepreneurs attracted to the capital by its aura of prosperity and its super-educated workforce. They are the lawyers, lobbyists and executives who work for companies that barely had a presence in Washington before the boom.

During the past decade, the region added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1 percent. No other metro area came close.

I used to live in the D.C. area, and I can tell you that the folks out there are living the high life at your expense.

Of course you and I are paying the bill for this too. The U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the Obama administration, and our politicians seem to have no trouble continuing to steal about 100 million dollars from our children and our grandchildren every single hour of every single day.

Meanwhile, thousands of other communities all over the nation are slowly being transformed into rotting, festering hellholes. The following is an excerpt from a recent CNBC article that discussed what is happening to Trenton, New Jersey...

When a city is badly broken, it can be very tough to fix.

Just ask Darren Green, president of a coalition of community groups in Trenton, N.J., where deep budget cuts in 2011 forced the city to lay off a third of its police force.

"We're at a place now where it's very dangerous to walk the streets," he said, his thoughts periodically interrupted by the distant sound of passing sirens. "The school system is dysfunctional and not working. You have young people who are robbing elders. Young people who are destroying communities. With no leadership and the community in disarray, there's a lot of bad here."

Like this is Walmart's fault. Or Target's. Or any other retailer's
I blame shitty governance, which is the fault of a stupid, soft citizenry. They vote wrong, and they are too scared to bust out the pitchforks. Come on you losers - *fight*. Vote them out, or chase their sorry asses out.

Yes it is Wal-Mart's fault as much as the government's. They could CHOOSE to operate under an ethical business model but they do not. Instead, the revel in all the excesses of crony corporatist fascism, not just bilking taxpayers in order to continue to pay shitty wages, but profiting further when same underpaid employees use their SNAP cards at their stores. Yes we can *fight* and one of the best ways to start is not spending a single penny at Wal-Mart (although pitchforks wouldn't hurt either). Stop blaming only one side of mutually corrupt system (.gov) and start punishing the corporate crooks as well.

this is the same company that allowed the Free Shit Army to maximize (beyond their limits) the EBT cards and decided not to try and claw back the amounts which we all paid for.

I hate Walmart. Yet it is fascinating to go into one and see what America has become. Fat, piggish disgusting slobs loading up high fructose corn syrup junk food, cheap crap from china and other shit. It is like visiting a third world nation full of prototype diabetics or future wannabes.

Whore Reading your post made me ask the question ,what kind of store works that hard at killing off it's customer base ? Somewhere there are ruling elites with a "one dollar" bet that they can kill off some useless eaters and their offspring and still make a shitload of money. Two birds with one stone kind of thing.

coming to your entire country one city at a time.......it's unfixable at this point, directionless, argumentative, divided, ideologically divorced from one another.......it's absolutely hopeless at this point, the Oligarchs have built such a layered defence, politically, socially, economically, militarally. It's like watching 12 year old girls trying to play football against the NY Giants.

The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday."

Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, said the food drive is proof that employees care about each other.

"It is for associates who have had some hardships come up," he said. "Maybe their spouse lost a job.

"This is part of the company's culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships," he said.

"What's so great about a depression?" Weight loss in the US would be one answer, problem is the poorer one becomes the more empty calories one eats. Poor people become horribly obese eating cheap industrial food. There's your "American paradox" as opposed to the dietary "French paradox".

So let's just dforce business to double the income of everyone making 30K/year. Problem solved, right?

When the government keeps the borders wide open, creating huge labor supply and prevents investment, the answer is to shit all over business? Why don't these people go work for google? They have 40% margins and can pay so well.

Thanks, I used a calculator instead of a spreadsheet... regardless, with employers currently spending an average of $500 per month on individual non-ZeroCare compliant plans until next year, and WallyWorld having no major existing plan to grandfather, comprehensive healthcare is no longer an option, if it ever was, since if you destroy margins you drive up financing costs, and revenues don't look good on a forward basis.

When companies that are famous for selling the cheapest shit have employees who are so poor that they can not afford to buy their company's cheap shit, you really have to question their business model.

Lemme see if I got this right... WM (and other food stores) want their employees to share their income with each other by buying the store's food.

I can see how this benefits the store's bottom line (higher sales volume, lower wages), but how does this help ALL their employees to live off their own labor?

Sounds exactly like what a slave owner or Pharaoh* might do: "Here are some scraps. Share. Don't be greedy."

* Academics still disagree on this business of alleged slaves having built the pyramids. Ageless mantras by some circles to the contrary, modern evidence suggests they were PAID workers. With health care. Free. IOW, a lot (most or all) of the stuff you read in the Pentateuch is BS: stuff badly distorted and partially made up later (revisionist history), by a charismatic guy, trying to homogenize and standardize his world view into a codified series of texts among his tribesmen and related tribes. Sounds like ancient version of Hostile Takeover. / Standard Harvard MBA stuff. /s

Plenty of evidence showing that the slaves were "paid" in beer. A very primative beer, more like an alcoholic oatmeal, but beer no the less. they were slaves because they were bonded to their labor not free to leave.

Yes, and the way you do this is by mothballing the welfare state, not forcing Walmart to increase the paychecks of people who are usually very low skilled.

If you use force in this context, the middle class keeps paying for the welfare state anyways because even if Walmart decides to hike their wages, don't you dare thinking the government bureaucracy will accept getting less funds for itself AND the same middle class will pay higher prices should it decide to shop at Walmart.

If Walmart's wage are truly not enough to put a roof over one's head and afford enough calory daily absent the welfare state, then it's obvious there's no point for them to punch in in the morning.

Anyways, Walmart pays above minimum wage and they are known to advocate for hikes in the minimum wage.

So now we have to pay shelf stockers a "living wage"? Let me get this straight. Obama kills investment/demand for labor via taxes, regs, open borders and the ACA, but it's WMT's fault they don't arbitrarily pay menial labor 2X the going rate? That's fucked up thinking, boyz.

The Commie thread? You economic idiot. Why do you think there are no jobs/deman fo labor? You answer is to artificially impose higher wages when the market is signaling the opposite. Name one time in hiostory that lunacy has worked out well. Moron

Of course there are no free markets once money is coercively monopolized, but markets indeed signal they are ripe for lower prices. Every time there is a rumour of central banks stopping to spike the punchbowl, it sends indexes down, and commodities soon follow.

I hate to agree, but on some level, where is personal responsibility? If you can only work for minimum wage at Walmart, why are you the supporting a family? Part of that answer is no one has to support a family - just look at our food stamp numbers, welfare numbers? We have a nation that's been bred to be caught from falling.

Sure, Walmart is greedy, but they are not responsible for making sure you support your family on price checking, shelf stocking money. Are they? Who would you blame if these people were at home doing nothing at all and living completely off the government and taxpayer?

Blaming Wal-Mart is a pointless exercise. Wal-Mart is simply a product of its economic and social environment. Fucked up educational system, fucked up banking system, fucked up political system, all layered onto a population that is becoming spiritually and morally bankrupt.

So now we have to pay shelf stockers a "living wage"? Let me get this straight. Obama kills investment/demand for labor via taxes, regs, open borders and the ACA, but it's WMT's fault they don't arbitrarily pay menial labor 2X the going rate? That's fucked up thinking, boyz.

JEEZUS....Pizza Man....as someone who has always been Conservative/Libertarian/Anarchist....I gotta say you REALLY give us a bad name.

What a COSMICALLY STUPID thing to say. You really need to stop smoking Rush Limbaugh's crack....(pun and double entendre very much intended)

Barry is doing nothing but continuing in a LONG line of Presidents who suck the Captains' of Industry and Banksters' collective dicks. It's capitalists clamouring for lower cost manufacturing and less payroll in order to maximize profits. Nothing wrong with that. That's the Capitalist way.

But just don't bitch about the inevitability that comes with that. Like the hollowing out of wages and the Middle Class. You could eliminated EVERY single tax in America and STILL not be able to compete with slave labor in the Asias.

Grow the fuck up and ditch that useless Right vs Left ideology. Multinational CEO's and Banksters don't give a shit about ideology or country.....the flag they salute is painted GREEN !

Agree, but you have to make accomodations for the indisputable fact that Obama is really in a class by himself. He was put in place to manage the endgame of the destruction of the USA, and is doing a bang-up job of it. Just so evil on so many levels that it boggles the mind.

The only "Class" Obama belongs to is that of Kermit the Frog, Elmo and Pinnochio. Amazing that Bush, Obama, etc rouse up such vitriol from otherwise knowlegable people. I get that he's the face of the evil and we have to endure him daily, but he's still just the face.

My point exactly, Jumbo. You have the US Chamber of Commerce clamoring for amnesty and open borders and no one is saying how "un-American" that is, yet Wallyworld gets itself a new @$$hole ripped for what it pays its help. Tommie Jeff said it best.

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."

That applies to the wolves hiding in the US Chamber of Commerce, Walmart and all of other the corporations, especially the banksters. The sin here is not the corporations, since we knew them to be soulless, self-serving ghouls focused exclusively on "increasing shareholder value". The sinners in this travesty is the government, whose job it is to keep these life-sucking leeches in check.

"Commerce without regulation is theft."

It is the fault of our elected representatives for not making sure that we, the People are not protected. And it is our own damned fault for electing representatives who serve the interests of the ghouls over our own. Alas, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Now try employing a few more brain cells yourself. Double wages, sure prices double. BUT DEBT RELATIVE TO WAGES HALVES. So yes, increasing wages, at this point, WILL help the economy. Until tomorrow. Because real estate prices will suddenly double and the next lot of idiot buyers and greedy bankers will make it happen. Plus, your competitiveness with foreign nations will halve, and import prices should relatively halve depending on the negotiating skills of those involved.

So why not halve the price of real estate? Oh no, we can't have that now can we? We can't refuse to lend money to idiots, no matter how obvious it is that they can't afford it because we must bow to the sacred god of the fwee markits and totally ignore all the banking fraud that is going on in the background. Oh it's the Walmart employee's fault for not innovating and acquiring capital and being their own boss becoz no-one owes them a living. Fuck you and everyone like you and I hope you get to live to eat your stupid words.

Fucking fwee markits for wage slaves while the rentier class gets free money from the Fed. Because wages are allowed to go to zero but we can't let them real estate / stock prices go down now can we???????????????

Get real. The inflation is already here, even without Walmart workers getting pay rises. Agreed the hyperinflation will be even more painful but your minimum wage workers are already hurting anyway. But to blame minimum wages for hyperinflation is bullshit. Idiot borrowers, corrupt bankers, TBTF and ZIRP will push up real estate and stock prices much faster than wages. Those minimum wages will be forever behind in the game of catch up until real estate prices reach a realistic level relative to wages, and that won't happen due to wages being kept low. It will happen when debt is either forgiven or inflated away and when bankers stop lending to idiots. Never bid in an auction if you're up against an idiot and his TBTF bankster.

"Double wages, sure prices double." I sincerely doubt it PT. What I mean is there is absolutely no empirical evidence that Walmart paying a true living wage will result in a doubling of their current prices.

That is what is known as a red herring my friend.

IT IS CALLED "EXPLOITATION" - AND SO FAR ON THIS COMMENTS PAGE I HAVEN'T YET SEEN THE 'E' WORD EVEN ONCE.

"EXPLOITATION" and then Walmart uses further exploitation of 'GOOD INTENT' on its employees to "fund" the lack of means Walmart simply will not provide in their Empire of cheap labour. FUCK WALMART. Fuck their cynical exploitation of Americans.

Agreed. Walmart is one of the VERY few cases where Bronco Bama's infamous "You didn't build that, somebody else made that happen." statement is true. Government cerated the inflation, destroyed the manufacturing base through "free trade" treaties and commited numerous other crimes against teh American people that alowed Walmart to prosper.

From my understanding, Walmart is a good example of the similarity between real capitalism and begging. Yes, begging. Don't like that word? Begging implies a one-sided transaction. How about we replace the word "begging" with the word "negotiating"? Did Walmart buy their real estate from the "free market"? From what I understand, they "negotiated" a cheaper deal. Tell me again, what did the counter-party get in return? Why are economists no good in business? Why do mathematicians fail at business? Because they're too busy worrying about the maths, and pay no attention to people skills, negotiating and begging. Do business men pay full price? Or do they "negotiate a better deal"?

Many many thanks for your comment ajax. The reason I asserted that prices would double is because I couldn't be bothered explaining to the fweemarkitfuckwits what really happens and I had a few other points to make that still have relevance.

But yes. Minimum wages < total costs therefore increase in total costs is less than increase in minimum wages. We got people operating machines that let one man do the job of ten, the minimum wage in real terms is half what it was fifty years ago and people are still asserting that minimum wage is a problem. They're choosing to stay ignorant.

Regarding Exploitation: fweemarkitfuckwits love to assert that every transaction is free will and therefore exploitation doesn't even exist. Anyone who has spent any time around small children (and that includes being a small child - I am not a teacher or parent) will have seen older siblings assert that the younger child "chose" to give him the lollies / toys.

I really feel sorry for all those small business owners that were put out of business by Walmart. I hear they earnt more money so they must have been poorer. They must have felt so much happier to leave their failed business and get a lower wage at Walmart so they could be richer.

WMT does stick its snout in the public's through, but your valid points still stand. Although I don't think open borders are a problem. If these are a problem to American's job security, they need to start learning shit real fast. Not hard, 1-2 years and you're a pipefitter, welder, car tech, etc.

And in a world of centralized wealth with NO VELOCITY of money who's fucking pipes are you supposed to fit??? All you academic libertarians need to look around at what's going on. FUCKING ENGINEERS ARE OUT OF WORK!!! YOU CANNOT HAVE A FUCTIONING ECONOMY WITH THIS TYPE OF WEALTH INEQUALITY! Jesus Fucking Christ...

The velocity of money stocks (M1V, M2V, etc.) is irrelevant when people pay with debt and credit since those are not counted in the traditional money stocks.

Yes, engineers are out of work, because these jobs are very specialized and for them to have readily avail. job openings, you need a booming economy. Try software engineering, there you'll see much more demand.

BTW, there is still an economy. Anemic growth, and sometimes contraction, but does not mean "no possibility of jobs at all" so get off your ass and learn something instead of trying to pretend there "something I don't get".

You are 50% of the reason why there US is in the position it is now. The remaining is statist predations.

A lot of people out there are doing courses as quickly as they can afford to, but it does not guarantee employment. In fact, many bosses complain "Oh you know the theory but you have no experience." How's that for a kick in the teeth? OTOH, some people manage to score a boss who pays them to learn.

Some people become eternal students. They think their next qualification will finally land them a job. Truth is, they need to know the right people, and you don't find that by sticking your nose in a book.

WMT margis are paper thin, fool. They make billions because of volume. Who shops at WMT? The poorest among us. Raise wages and you raise the cost of the very items they buy. So, better no WMT than the present situation? Blame O-fuck-face for an economy with so few choices for the poor and for all the imported illegals they have to compete with for a job.

Pizza man: How the fuck could an increase in minimum wages hurt a minimum wage worker? At worst, things would stay the fucking SAME. But given that Walmart worker's wages are less than the total cost of Walmart ( and don't forget they import their merchandise from a different market), an increase in wages would cause a relatively smaller increase in prices. The minimum wage worker nets out better off. As I mentioned a minute ago, the Walmart worker's mortgage won't suddenly go up just because he got a wage rise, neither will Walmart's mortgage. So in the end, they are better off.

"its not a depression because there are no food lines". luckily, we now have debit cards replenished every month by Obama, courtesy of Ben's printing, for the poor that would be otherwise standing in those long lines everyday.

Don't worry sheeple...go back to sleep...the invisible hand is sorting it all out...

Meet the Family

The Walton family is the richest family in the United States and one of the richest in the world. They are heirs to the Walmart fortune and the company’s largest shareholders, with a nearly-fifty percent ownership of stock in the retail giant.

Sam Walton and his brother Bud opened their first Walmart discount store in 1962. Today three family members serve on Walmart’s board of directors;[1] Rob is the chair, and sits on the board with his brother Jim and his son-in-law, Greg Penner.

Six members of the family rank among the top eleven on Forbes’ list of wealthiest Americans,[2] with a net worth of about $93 billion. With their 49% stake in Walmart, they brought in $2.2 billion in dividends off of Walmart stock last year alone.

That's because, if everybody's rich, nobody's rich. It's all relative. The poorer you get, the richer they feel. Plus, there's the added benefit of poor people being powerless and easy to push around. Unless they have guns and ammo, of course.

Let's see...where could we find a big country full of relatively poor people with lots and lots of guns? Switzerlan---BZZZZZT! Wrong answer!

Last I saw, they earned every penny. You act as if wealth accumulation is bad in all cases. No one forces people to shop in a WMT, fool. No one forces workers to work in a WMT. Unless of course, the economy is so damn mismanaged they have no other choice.

You don't like WMT, then let's create an atmosphere where new business creations is so damn rampant labor supply is strained and wages go up.

... and they never got too rich because the fwee markits ensured that competition would drive their prices down and keep them competitive. Ignore those profits. If they were too high then a competitor would have come along and done the job cheaper. Now pardon me while I go and throw up.

no dipshit. nobody forces them to work at walmart. force is only used on the people who MAKE stuff for walmart. i feel better now. want to create an environment where business and job creation go crazy? tarriff everything walmart imports. better yet. we have an air force. hunt down and strafe their semis on the interstates. might as well get target's at the same time. bullseye is already painted on the side.

The walton's are anti-thanks giving. It is forced holiday (albiet a couple hours) which stands in the way of christmas marketing. Granted, they compromised by creating the "Black Friday" holiday as a mitigation to the restraints of Thanks giving.

They open Thanksgiving day because they want to pay extra staff to stand around with fingers up nose or because there is strong demand by John Q. Public to do so? Less emotion on this subject would be helpful. I say again. You don't like WMT, don't shop there. You don't like low wages for the unskilled, lets stop importing illegals by the millions to compete and let's find a way to stop the government from destroying investement. Anyone have a peek at the velocity of money since Epic Clown in chief started playing around with the economy? What dopey moves Bush made, The Clown has done 3X. How long can our economy withstand the attacks? (Not long at all)

This chaps my ass to infinity. Tha Walton heirs have more money between the three of them than 100 million of our citizens... that's almost one third of our population. Fuck you WalMart, may you die a painfull fucking death !

After the civil war, and the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Lincoln, many newly free blacks found themselves thinking about what to do with their lives now that they were free men. Well most people need to earn a living, but poor ex-slaves didn't have any valuable or marketable skills. So many of them went back to work on the plantations, as free men (and women), for a wage, doing work they were used to doing. Only generations of being in slavery with no education left them ignorant to how the world works. So the plantation owners scammed them once again, by paying them in script only redeemable at the plantation general store, which resulted in pay that ended up being pennies on the dollar.

"The irony of Walmart." I get your point shovelhead but I'd replace irony with "grotesquerie"

It is utterly grotesque to ask underpaid employees to bailout underpaid employees over the holiday season. Worse than grotesque (if anything can be) it is unbelievably cynical and even cruel. Cynical because Americans are on the whole a people who really do want to help out neighbours, friends, co-workers in need. WALMART IS USING/ABUSING THE BASIC DECENCY OF AMERICANS.

WalMart needs help, please ask your congressman to give some more tax breaks and subsidies to WalMart. Maybe we could lower the minimum wage. How about 0$? DONE, 0$ and an EBT card holder for the future US taxpayer to pick up the tab.

Then WalMart can distribute donated meals to employees and seniors and all WalMart employees could work for free...

WalMart could write off the costs of it's whole distribution network as costs needed to distribute donated meals for underpaid employees.

Yes, I'm old enough to remember running to 10 stores to get what I wanted and much higher prices. Have you forgotten there is a reason people go to WMT? Frankly, I don't like the changes to society WMT has produced, but i'm not silly enough to rail against WMT. When we had a real economy, new and innovative biz would have jumped into the fray. Now? We let our political masters tell us we need to artificially raise wages as they keep the illigal immigration door wide open and kill investment with taxes and useless regs. They are not all about clean air and water, people.

America used to be a place to take the risk to invest in new biz. Now? no one makes a large move into America without their "deal". The gov puts up walls only big crony biz can afford to pay to lower. Innovation and new jobs get crushed.

WMT is the symptom, not the cause of our troubles. You play ino the propaganda..BLAME BUSH, BLAME WMT while taxes, regs, open borders send investment and biz fleeing and the poor get crushed.

Why isn't WMT simply an entry level job for kids on the first step of the American dream?? Becuase big gov has crushed the ladder and wants us to blame WMT.